Sarah Palin: “It’s not too late”

Ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took herself out of the 2012 Republican presidential race in October, but two months later she is continuing continues to tantalize and toy with the contest.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. (Getty Images)

“It’s not too late for folks to jump in: Who knows what will happen in the future?” Palin, the Republicans’ 2008 vice presidential nominee, told the Fox Business Network on Monday night.

Palin has enjoyed upstaging finding ways to upstage the Republican field through much of the year.

The ex-governor’s “Freedom” bus tour of America’s historic sites arrived in New Hampshire just as GOP frontrunner ex-Gov. Mitt Romney was formally announcing his candidacy 10 miles away.

She hit the Iowa State Fair in August, on the eve of a Republican Straw Poll that drew most of the GOP field.

While Palin said in October she would not seek the Republican nomination, she is stepping back into the limelight just two weeks before the January 3 Iowa presidential caucuses.

Over the weekend, Palin told Fox News — for whom she serves as a pundit — that she has not made up her mind on an endorsement. She indicated a lack of enthusiasm for the Republican field, an opinion echoed in recent polls of GOP voters.

“My endorsement is going to be with sincerity and enthusiasm and I am just not there yet . . . with the field as it stands,” she said. “And there’s no need to endorse until that enthusiasm is really within me, in my gut.”

There has been press speculation that Palin was leaning toward ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But as Gingrich faces a barrage of opponents’ TV commercials, and denunciations from the conservative “commentocracy,” his poll numbers have lately fallen.

Palin is not the only public figure “showing a little leg” in the 2012 race.

(David Becker/Getty Images)

Real estate mogul Donald Trump, who flirted with the Republican contest in April, recently pulled out as moderator of a GOP debate. Trump said has not ruled out entering the 2012 race for the White House if Republicans do not nominate the “right” candidate.